The world's fat with gold, and we're the lads to share it.

What though swift death is the rover's lot?

We've played the game and we'll pay the shot.

Sing ho, sing hey, this life's but a day, Then live it free as a rover may.

"Sing ho, sing hey!" echoed the audience in a loud discordant roar.

Cookie over his dishpan flinging it back in a tremendous ba.s.so.

Cookie was the n.o.ble youth's only musical rival, and when he had finished his work we would invite him to join us at the fire and regale us with plantation melodies and camp-meeting hymns. The negro's melodious thunder mingled with the murmur of wind and wave like a kindred note, and the strange plaintive rhythm of his artless songs took one back and back, far up the stream of life, until a fire upon a beach seemed one's ancestral hearth and home.

I realized that life on Leeward Island might rapidly become a process of reversion.

VII

A RABBIT'S FOOT

It was fortunate that Cookie knew nothing of the solitary grave somewhere on the island, with its stone marked with B. H. and a cross-bones, nor that the inhabitant thereof was supposed to walk.

If he had, I think the strange spectacle of a lone negro in a small boat rowing l.u.s.tily for the American continent might soon have been witnessed on the Pacific by any eyes that were there to see. And we could ill have spared either boat or cook.

Yet even though unvexed by this gruesome knowledge, after two or three days I noticed that Cookie was ill at ease. As the leisure member of the party, I enjoyed more of Cookie's society than the rest. On this occasion while the morning was still in its early freshness he was permitting me to make fudge. But his usual joviality was gone. I saw that he glanced over his shoulder at intervals, muttering darkly to himself. Also that a rabbit's foot was slung conspicuously about his neck.

Having made my fudge and set the pan on a stone in the stream to cool, I was about to retire with a view to conducting a limited exploring expedition of my own. The immunity of the umbrellas and the a.s.surances of Mr. Shaw--not personally directed to me, of course; the armed truce under which we lived did not permit of that--had convinced me that I had not to dread anything more ferocious than the pigs, and the wildest of them would retire before a stick or stone. Besides, I boasted a little automatic, which I carried strapped about my waist in a businesslike manner.

Mr. Vane had almost got me to the point where I could shoot it off without shutting my eyes.

Thus equipped, I was about to set off into the woods. Secretly I had been rehearsing a dramatic scene, with myself in the leading role:

_Treasure-seekers a.s.sembled, including a cold and cynical Scot.

Enter Virginia Harding. She wears an expression elaborately casual, but there is a light of concealed triumph in her eye_.

_Aunt Jane_: You thoughtless child, where have you been? Really, my state of mind about you--etc., etc.

_V. H._: Only for a stroll, dear aunt. And by the way, in case it's of interest to any one, I might mention that during my walk I fell over a boulder which happened to be marked with the letters B.

H. and a cross-bones.

_Immense commotion and excitement. Every gaze turned to V. H.

(including that of cynical Scot) while on every cheek is the blush of shame at remembering that this is the same Young Person whom Miss Higglesby-Browne was permitted to cut off by treaty from the ranks of the authorised treasure-seekers_.

Lured by this pleasing vision I had turned my back on Cookie and the camp, when I was arrested by an exclamation:

"Miss Jinny!"

I turned to, find Cookie gazing after me with an expression which, in the familiar phrase of fiction, I could not interpret, though among its ingredients were doubt and anguish. Cookie, too, looked pale. I don't in the least know how he managed it, but that was the impression he conveyed, dusky as he was.

"Miss Jinny, it mos' look lak yo' 'bout to go perambulatin' in dese yere woods?"

"I am, Cookie," I admitted.

The whites of Cookie's eyes became alarmingly conspicuous. Drawing near in a stealthy manner he whispered:

"Yo' bettah not, Miss Jinny!"

"Better not?" I repeated, staring.

He answered with a portentous head-shake.

"Oh, nonsense, Cookie!" I said impatiently, "There's not a thing on the island but the pigs!"

"Miss Jinny," he solemnly replied, "dey's pigs and pigs."

"Yes, but pigs _is_ pigs, you know," I answered, laughing. I was about to walk on, but once more Cookie intervened.

"Dey's pigs and pigs, chile--live ones and--dead ones.

"Dead ones? Of course--haven't we been eating them?"

"Yo' won't neveh eat dis yere kind o' dead pig, Miss Jinny.

It's--it's a ha'nt!"

The murder was out. Cookie leaned against a cocoa-palm and wiped his ebon brow.

Persistently questioned, he told at last how, today and yesterday, arising in the dim dawn to build his fire before the camp was stirring, he had seen lurking at the edge of the clearing a white four-footed shape. It was a pig, yet not a pig; its ghostly hue, its noiseless movements, divided it from all proper mundane porkers by the dreadful gulf which divides the living from the dead. The first morning Cookie, doubtful of his senses, had flung a stone and the spectral Thing had vanished like a shadow. On its second appearance, having had a day and a night for meditation, he had known better than to commit such an outrage upon the possessor of ghostly powers, and had resorted to prayer instead. This had answered quite as well, for the phantom pig had dissolved like the morning mists. While the sun blazed, what with his devotions and his rabbit's foot and a cross of twigs nailed to a tree. Cookie felt a fair degree of security. But his teeth chattered in his head at the thought of approaching night. Meanwhile he could not in conscience permit me to venture forth into the path of this horror, which might, for all we knew, be lurking in the jungle shadows even through the daylight hours. Also, though he did not avow this motive, I believe he found my company very rea.s.suring.

It is immensely easier to face a ghost in the sustaining presence of other flesh and blood.

"Cookie," said I sternly, "you've been drinking too much cocoanut-milk and it has gone to your head. What you saw was just a plain ordinary pig."

Cookie disputed this, citing the pale hue of the apparition as against the fact that all our island pigs were black.

"Then there happens to be a blond pig among them that we haven't seen," I a.s.sured him.

But the pig of flesh, Cookie reminded me, was a heavy lumbering creature. This Shape was silent as a moonbeam. There was also about it a dreadful appearance of stealth and secrecy--Cookie's eyes bulged at the recollection. Nothing living but a witch's cat could have disappeared from Cookie's vision as did the ghostly pig.

For a moment I wavered in my determination. What if the island had its wild creatures after all? But neither lynx nor panther nor any other beast of prey is white, except a polar bear, and it would be unusual to meet one on a tropical island.

I decided that Cookie's pig was after all a pig, though still in the flesh. I thought I remembered having seen quite fair pigs, which would pa.s.s for white with a frightened negro in the dim light of dawn. So far only black pigs had been visible, but perhaps the light ones were shyer and kept to the remote parts of the island.

I consoled Cookie as best I could by promising to cross my fingers if I heard or saw anything suspicious, and struck out into the woods,

For all my brave words to Cookie, I had no intention of going very far afield. From the sh.o.r.e of the cove I had observed that the ground behind the clearing rose to the summit of a low ridge, perhaps four hundred feet in height, which jutted from the base of the peak. From this ridge I thought I might see something more of the island than the limited environment of Lantern Bay.

As the woods shut out the last glimpse of the white tents in the clearing, as even the familiar sound of the surf died down to a faint, half-imagined whisper mingling with the rustling of the palms overhead, I experienced a certain discomfort, which persons given to harsh and unqualified terms might have called fear. It seemed to me as if a very strong cord at the rear of my belt were jerking me back toward the inglorious safety of camp. Fortunately there came to me a vision of the three umbrellas and of Mr. Tubbs heroically exposing his devoted bosom to non-existent perils, and I resolved that the superior smiles with which I had greeted Aunt Jane's recital should not rise up to shame me now. I fingered my automatic and marched on up the hill, trying not to gasp when a leaf rustled or a cocoanut dropped in the woods.

There was little undergrowth between the crowding trunks of the cocoa-palms. Far overhead their fronds mingled in a green thatch, through which a soft light filtered down. Here and there the close ranks of the palms were broken by an outcropping of rock, glaring up hot and sunbeaten at a distant patch of the sky. The air of the forest was still and languid, its heat tempered like that of a room with drawn blinds.

I gained the summit of the ridge, and stood upon a bare rock platform, scantily sheltered by a few trees, large shrubs rather, with a smooth waxy leaf of vivid green. On the left rose the great ma.s.s of the peak. From far above among its crags a beautiful foamy waterfall came hurtling down. Before me the ground fell away to the level of the low plateau, or mesa, as we say in California, which made up the greater part of the island. Cutting into the green of this was the gleaming curve of a little bay, which in Mr.

Shaw's chart of the island showed slightly larger than our cove.

Part of it was hidden by the shoulder of the peak, but enough was visible to give a beautiful variety to the picture, which was set in a silver frame of sea.

I had not dreamed of getting a view so glorious from the little eminence of the ridge. Here was an item of news to take back to camp. Having with great originality christened the place Lookout, I turned to go. And as I turned I saw a shape vanish into the woods.